Acevedo told CNN’s Don Lemon that the U.S.-born children of immigrants had approached him at forums saying, “I’m afraid to go to school, I’m afraid to leave the house, I’m afraid to come home and find my parents are gone.”

“Those fears are real,” the chief said.

Raids by ICE agents are slated to start on Sunday, The New York Times reported. Trump had initially planned to launch them last month, but paused the operation in a bid to come up with a “solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border” with Democrats, he tweeted.

Acevedo said pronouncements like “we’re gonna go round up a million people” also pushed people “further into the dark and further outside of the realm of society, which means we have a harder time investigating crime.”

“I think we should be chasing crooks, not cooks,” he added.

Acevedo acknowledged that his department does work with ICE “as it relates to Homeland Security investigations, going after real hardcore criminals.”

“There’s a lot of them out there and we’re just hopeful that we don’t create greater problems for society by separating families,” Acevedo added. “Families belong together, they certainly don’t belong apart.”

Check out the clip here:

"There's a lot of fear across our immigrant community," says Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo about ICE raids planned for Sunday. "When we make pronouncements that we're going to go round up a million people, all that does is create havoc." https://t.co/BhhlQj0wd1pic.twitter.com/gtpakPuJHi